


that does not make us wise

by heartunsettledsoul



Series: Forgotten Moments [22]
Category: Riverdale (TV 2017)
Genre: Canon Compliant, Heathers the musical, Post 3x16, and burning car sex, angsty smut, angsty smut is my specialty, basically betty & jug have a bunch of inappropriately-timed sex, like in a drug lab sex, post ep
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-27
Updated: 2019-03-27
Packaged: 2019-12-18 15:43:29
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,069
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18252884
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/heartunsettledsoul/pseuds/heartunsettledsoul
Summary: She can see the tears pooled in his eyes and knows that hers are the same. It seems like someone is always crying nowadays. Or if they aren't crying, they want to.“Juggie?” His eyes are fixed on a point somewhere behind her head. The spot where his “Rebel Without a Cause” poster used to hang, she realizes when she follows his gaze.“How the hell did it get here? When did our lives go from worrying about who would sit next to us on the bus, to drug lord mothers?”“And serial killer fathers,” Betty scoffs. “And unstoppable cults.”Jughead breathes out a laugh but the inhale is still shaky. “God, what are we gonna do?”or, they slow dance and mourn their innocence among the wreckage. 3x16 post-ep.





	that does not make us wise

**Author's Note:**

> title from seventeen. obviously.

_I wish your mom had been a little stronger_  
_I wish she stayed around a little longer_  
_I wish your dad were good_  
_I wish grown-ups understood  
\- Dead Girl Walking (Reprise)_

* * *

 

By the time Betty finds Jughead and the Jones trailer in the junkyard, she’s under no pretense about what she’s walking into.

She swings the door open with a crash and looks around. Lab equipment is everywhere. The chemical stench is strong when she first breathes in and then settles uncomfortably sharp in her nose. Jughead is sunk low into the couch to her right, head hung in his hands.

The silence itself is deafening, the sad realization of what this all means. Betty is shell-shocked, determining what to do in this moment. She wants to rush over to him, hold him and tell him they’ll be okay, they’ve gotten through difficult things before. But this time, she’s not so sure.

And then, in a small voice, Betty hears him say, “It’s not fair. We’re only seventeen and it’s not fair.”

She’s not caught off guard by the content of his statement; it’s true that _none_ of this is fair, none of this is anything they should be dealing with. What surprises her is that Jughead says it at all. No one says it, dares to voice it, but Jughead has been dealt the worst hand of them all. They might be on equally rocky footing now, but he’s always had that instability.

He never admits to it though.

Not when Reggie and Chuck used to make fun of his secondhand clothes; when Betty spent all of second through fourth grade lying about the cost of lunch so she could buy too many snacks with her sandwich and say wasn’t that hungry when she offered them to Jughead; when his mom _left him behind_ and he was homeless and without regular meals; when his father was charged with murder, then put _away_ for murder, when he’s initiated into a gang at sixteen and put in charge of it before he’s even seventeen. When he nearly dies for the sake of their town’s peace.

Jughead has never once acknowledged how fundamentally, carelessly cruel the world is to him.

And this is what does him in. Mourning the trashed memories of a childhood he hated to begin with.

In the center of the living room, still somewhat recognizable for its original purpose but cluttered with boxes and stacks of bent folding chairs, Jughead gets up and begins to pace. “This was my childhood home. My mom destroyed it.”

Moving toward him, she stills his shaking hands by grasping them in her own and bringing them to her waist. His fingers flex against the ribbed hem of her sweater, and the exposed strip of skin below it, before settling. The beat of his heart vibrates through his fingertips, flowing through her own skin until they beat as one. Betty hears his sigh of relief in the same fraction of a moment that she feels them fall in sync, one of those little things that seems impossible to notice, inconsequential to the world at large.

To her, it’s everything. It’s the reminder that Jughead is her partner in all of this, so much so that their inner workings of their bodies even know it. She know he feels it too, likely to a lesser degree in their day to day, but more so now, in the heavier, confusing moments where he needs grounding. She can see the tears pooled in his eyes and knows that hers are the same. It seems like someone is always crying nowadays. Or if they aren’t crying, they want to.

“Juggie?” His eyes are fixed on a point somewhere behind her head. The spot where his “Rebel Without a Cause” poster used to hang, she realizes when she follows his gaze.

“How the hell did it get here? When did our lives go from worrying about who we would sit next to us on the bus, to drug lord mothers?”

“And serial killer fathers,” Betty scoffs. “And unstoppable cults.”

Jughead breathes out a laugh but the inhale is still shaky. “God, what are we gonna _do?_ ”

She takes his face in her hands and guides his gaze to meet hers, brushing away some of the tears that have fallen with her thumb. Jughead relaxes further, leaning his cheek into her palm and closing his eyes before he dips down to kiss her. It’s brief and she can feel the nervous tremor as his lips slot over hers. When he breaks away and reopens his eyes, more tears fall, but his voice is steady when he speaks. “For being stuck in this chaotic hellscape, I’m glad you’re the one I choose to be with, Betty Cooper.”

Betty’s heart swells at the words, remembering the soft look in his eyes from so many months ago when they stood on this same spot and put words to the love they’d already felt for so long. She knows his anguish over lost memories is more for ones like those than the ones of his childhood that he’s only ever shared with bitterness laced on his tongue. It’s his sigh of relief when she told him he believed in him; the squeal she made when he hoisted her up after telling her he loved her; the crick in her neck she woke up with after falling asleep investigating and the sleepy softness of his voice being the first thing she heard in the new day; the moonlight glowing through the curtains as she gripped his palms instead of her own and told him about the haunting phone calls; his broken voice asking her to stay, the quiet _snick_ of the zipper on her dress for Veronica’s Confirmation going down her spine, his lips on her skin, and the comfort of her own confidence in telling Jughead that all she wanted, all she ever wants, is him.

Somewhere in the depths of the junkyard, a radio plays something soft and melodic, unfitting for the reality of their world. And then with a delicacy she doesn’t see in him often, Jughead takes her hand and guides her closer, sliding his palm down her arm and turning her in a gentle twirl until he’s holding her to him.

Ghosting her lips over his, Betty leans in close. “Come on, Juggie. Make me feel seventeen.”

Maybe it’s not the right time, the right distraction. It’s definitely not the right place, not with Jughead’s adolescent memories burning away under the stench of chemicals. Maybe that’s the _point._

But Jughead doesn’t even hesitate to contemplate this the way that she does. In a split second, the hands on her waist grip tight and push her backwards, up against the dented, useless door. It’s forceful enough that something falls over behind them, that she’ll probably have a bruise at the top of her ass later—if not of the doorknob than of his fingers, which maybe she wants even more—and Betty can’t bring herself to care. Jughead’s lips are harsh on the skin of her neck, sucking hard in a way that she knows will leave marks to be covered by heavy, caked stage makeup.

The heat of his body around hers is quick and intense and she groans into the silence. Hands and lips and tongue are everywhere, his thigh slotting between her legs and pressing up to give her friction, chest so close to hers that the layers of fabric may as well be useless. She lets herself get lost in how good it feels until Jughead’s fingers pause at the hook of her bra, tracing lightly at the skin there, but making no move to undo it.

She blinks, confused. “What?”

Jughead pulls back for a moment to smirk at her. “Well—” he pops her clasp, presses a kiss just below her ear, “—two to tango—” one hand moves around to cup and squeeze her left breast, the other wrenches her neck to the side so he can bite the juncture of her neck and shoulder, “—and all that, right?”

The haze of lust must be taking too long to clear because Jughead nips at her neck again and pulls back once more, looking pointedly at where her hands are listless at her sides. Doing nothing. When they could be—should be—doing plenty.

“Oh,” Betty says dumbly, drumming the fingers of her right hand against her jeans as if to check that they still move.

Jughead laces his hand through hers to stop the drumming and then, in a mirror to her earlier move, places it on his hip. Betty grips it. The hand on her breast tightens in response. “ _Oh_ , indeed.”

A flurry of movement happens after that. Her free hand tugs at his zipper and slips underneath the cotton of his boxers; her sweater is yanked overhead but remains hanging on the arm already busy with hot flesh; when he bites at her nipple, she squeezes hard, and they’re both moaning at an absurd volume when Jughead steers them toward a flat surface. They land on the couch, left behind with the rest of the trailer’s decor, and Betty is glad for it, for the memories it holds, but mostly for the soft surface.

The sagging cushions deflate under her knees as she presses him down and then straddles his legs, bringing her mouth to join her hand. She relishes in the satisfied noise he makes, pride bolstering her, and sucks on him hard, letting her nails scratch lightly at his hips until she hears his rushed, “Fuck, fuck, _fuck,_ no, get up here, not yet,” and then swirls her tongue in a dangerous manner that has him pulling her off him by the ponytail.

“Not yet,” he repeats. If she squints, Betty can see the reflection of her swollen lips hovering over his dick in the pupils of his eyes. It makes her pant harder, run her thumb lightly over him, drunk on the power of having him so undone with her, only her.

He swears again and hauls her up to him, so his mouth is level with the underside of her breasts and she can feel, more than hear, the whisper of _fuck, so wet,_ when he dips into her jeans and slides fingertips against her.

She is. Unbearably, obscenely so. It takes almost nothing for the release to wash over her, just three precise circles and Jughead whispering sweet, hot nothings into her ear. When she collapses, boneless, onto his chest, he strokes her hair and cradles her to him as he performs complicated gymnastics to lay her out beneath him on the couch. Distracted and satiated as she is, Betty doesn’t realize her pants are off and he’s moved south until his tongue hits the crease of her thigh and she flinches, nearly taking his head off.

They both laugh. Jughead rests his cheek against her thigh, the lines on his face happy ones for once, and the stubborn curl on his forehead bounces from shared laughter. When they settle and he ducks down again, Betty murmurs _no_ to him and the crestfallen look on his face is so extreme that she nearly breaks into giggles again. “I’m too sensitive right now. Come up here.” They’re a mess of twisted clothing and sweaty limbs and nothing feels more perfect than when he tucks a strand of hair back behind her ear before kissing her so thoroughly she can feel it in her toes.

In no time at all, the kiss turns feisty and she bites his bottom lip, his hips involuntary pushing against her in response, and then all bets are off again. The bets _stay_ off when Jughead pries his lips off her nipple with a pop, still thrusting shallowly against the hard press of her hip and whines, “I don’t have anything on me.”

The one positive element of the Jones moving into the former Cooper home is the _bed_ they now have unrestricted access to in a house with less invasive parents. But all the condoms are across town, in a spare pillowcase on top of the empty moving box Jughead is using as a nightstand. There’s no chance of any to be found in the trailer, certainly not with its new uses, but mostly because Jughead packed up everything sensitive the moment the rest of his family showed. And they don’t get to be impromptu, not with their lives, so they’ve never taken to carrying anything with them.

_But_ , Betty thinks, and then says, “Fuck it.”

Jughead’s body clearly agrees, growing harder on her hip, but his expression is one Betty’s come to know as his _I should argue with you but you’re going to win anyway_ look. “Um, Betts?”

They’ve talked about it. It would be weird if they hadn’t, given the state of their teenage hormones. Mainly because of the Cooper women’s high fertility rate. Never as an inevitability though; they’re secure in their relationship but not beyond the shyness of truly discussing their future, _that_ future.

“Come on,” she whispers conspiratorially. “Seventeen, right?” He doesn’t look convinced, so she rolls her hips slightly. “I haven’t missed a pill. 4pm on the dot, every day. _Please,_ Jug. I need you.”

He swears. Whether in acquiescence, pleasure, pain, or some combination of the three, Betty doesn’t know. But then he’s pushing inside her and she digs her nails into the fabric of the shirt he still has on because they’re _half-clothed and fucking on the couch in his former home-turned-drug-lab_ and she feels half crazy for not even caring.

And then all she feels is _good,_ not for any difference she can feel but for Jughead’s murmured, “I love you, I love you, I love you,” in her ear, the fluttering of his ab muscles against hers, and the pleasure licking up her spine in a low simmer. He presses sloppy kisses to her lips, nose, jaw, forehead and asks her what she needs to finish again.

Somewhere in the haze, Betty groans out _touch me_ , and his hands are everywhere again. When the pad of his thumb hits sensitive flesh where they’re joined, Betty hisses, “Oh, there, there, there,” and feels his smirk press into her neck as he works harder to help her over the edge. With a hitch of her leg over his waist, she cries out and is still trembling when he grips the leg higher up against him to follow a few moments after.

It’s hard to let go of each other, but time is not their friend. Even so, they help each other right their clothing, Betty buttoning his flannel for him and Jughead holding the loops of her jeans while she wriggles her way back into them. The distant radio is still playing when they exit the rickety door, likely for the last time.

“What now,” she asks him.

He pulls her into him again and presses a kiss to the crown of her head. “Haven’t decided yet.”  
  


 

 

It’s hard to find anything else to talk about. There’s the play, but then there’s the Farm. There’s the speakeasy, but then Veronica’s downward spiral and Hiram Lodge trying to kill Archie. There’s Archie and Fred and Vegas, which is ultimately where they land—reminiscing on treehouse days over milkshakes and scrolling social media to look at picture of Vegas as a puppy—but even so, there’s the lingering darkness of Archie’s brushes with death, with growing up together and never realizing the monster on Elm Street lived in her own house.    

Riverdale makes even the happiest of memories grim.

At least she has Jughead.

He’s still the boy who stood up to Cheryl for her in third grade and always let her sneak a fry at lunch, even when Betty knew he was hungry. He put his grudges aside to resurrect the Blue and Gold and accepted her darkest insecurity with grace and kindness, has always loved her fiercely and never let her down.

It’s like he said in the trailer: if they have to deal with the wreckage of their young lives, at least they’ve chosen each other as their partners in it all.

If she closes her eyes, lets the ambience of Pop’s wash over her and focus only on the cold milkshake melting in her mouth and on Jughead’s arm slung around her shoulder, Betty can almost pretend none of this is happening. That it’s two years earlier, before Jason, before her father, before the Serpents and cults and Gargoyle Kings and oh so many drugs. That maybe, just maybe, she and Jughead could have found each other without all the trauma and been the quintessential story of two childhood friends that fell in love to live happily ever after.

As if Jughead hears her thoughts and knows how absurd the idea of a happily ever after in Riverdale is, he chuckles.

“What?”

He huffs out another laugh. “Just thinking how this year’s musical is actually giving that one where _our classmate was murdered on stage_ a run for its money in insanity.”

Betty giggles, only because she’s certain if she doesn’t, she may start crying again.

  
  


 

In the end, destroying the trailer is her idea. Betty watches the look of defeat come over Jughead’s face when she suggests he let the whole thing go, knows that he knows she’s right. It’s too exhausting at this point.

They drive Alice’s station wagon (practically abandoned, because “the Farm doesn’t like earthly possessions, Betty!”) out to Greendale to fill containers with gasoline, Jughead paying with two crumpled twenties he fished out of Gladys’s Toledo Serpents jacket from where it hung on a coat stand Alice left behind. When Betty raises her eyebrows at him, he shrugs. “Felt fitting.”

She can’t disagree.

On the collapsing front steps of the trailer, Betty and Jughead admire their handy work. The entire place is doused, ready to go up in flames, and all their memories with it. Betty hopes that Jughead feels the same kind of twisted satisfaction that she had when she dropped the candle in her living room—a mournful _good riddance_ as the home that torments their dreams burns away into nothing.

(At least Jughead’s endeavor is primed for complete success, as opposed to hers.)

Betty strikes the match and passes it to him. “Care to do the honors?”

He snorts. “With fucking pleasure.” With a flick of his fingers, the match lands on a corner of torn carpet and the flames are instantaneous. Betty moves to lead him back to the car, but he resists.

“Jug?”

“Just a second.”

Despite the wall of heat growing before them, Betty stays by his side as he crouches down and tears a piece of the sheet metal from the stairs. He hisses out a swear when he slices his thumb on the jagged edge and, were his hands not still busy, Betty would pull it to her mouth to soothe the pain away for him.

Instead, he hands Betty the metal, positioning it so she holds the flat end toward him. And then his switchblade opens with a deadly _flick_ and he’s carefully dragging it through the material. After the first two strokes, she knows exactly what he’s doing.

It’s his crown.

With a deadly glint in his eye, he pulls his handiwork from her grasp and tosses it frisbee-style into a patch of grass that may or may not survive the blaze. “I want her to know it was me.”

Betty has half a mind to chastise him for the risky move but, then again, everything they’re doing as of late is risky so she settles for urging him back toward the station wagon. One of the windows bursts and their retreat turns into a jog. She slides into the passenger seat and watches the flames dance higher and higher. Some of the heat got to her, sweat beading on her neck, so she takes a sip from the shitty gas station milkshake she’d bought for them on a whim—if only so she could have something to do with her hands during the drive to the junkyard.

It’s certainly no Pop’s, but it does the trick when you’re sweating and staring down your own work of arson.

And then Jughead, starry-eyed but not just from the growing wall of flames, tells her something she’s thought time and time again over the last few months: they’re surviving because they have each other. The weight off his shoulders is evident in the lightness in his voice and something inside Betty snaps at this, propelling her toward him in a frantic need to feel his skin against hers.

It’s ferocious, almost, the way they lock lips and start tearing at each other’s coats in desperation. He nips at her bottom lip in the same moment that she wrenches open his belt and, yet again, they’ve found themselves in bizarre state of undress among the Jones trailer and its associated crime.

Betty thinks briefly as she palms Jughead through his boxers and he fumbles with the buttons on her jeans that maybe it’s the recklessness of it all that turns her on. When Jughead growls in frustration at the restrictive angle they’re in, pops the seat as far back as it goes, and practically hauls them both into the wide backseat of the station wagon, she realizes it’s definitely the recklessness. With more space, they shed their clothes and kiss every bit of skin within reach. She clambers into his lap and Jughead’s fingers are back at her center in no time at all, moving easily against the wetness there and sending shockwaves up her spine.

“ _Jug,”_ she whines. “My call time is soon.”

“So?” He punctuates his point with a swipe of his thumb and a hard press of his fingers higher inside her. “You’re the one who started taking your clothes off.” As he keeps talking, Jughead lifts his hips to get as much pressure for himself as possible. There’s a gap, left from where his own hand disappears into her underwear, so Betty takes pity and adds her own hand to the fray and delights at the hitch in his voice when she strokes him. “Besides, if I—remember correctly, _someone_ finished in like five seconds yesterday. I don’t think time is an issue, baby.”

Betty's only response is to drop her head to his shoulder in a gasp at the press of his thumb again.

“You’re totally turned on by this disaster, huh,” he murmurs into her hair. She nods weakly; there's no use trying to deny it. She's not sure what it is but the element of danger, of knowing the stakes are high, just makes her want to rip her clothes off faster so she and Jug can cling to each other and wipe away the chaos together. They move against each other with heavy groans and the air in the car grows warmer with each passing moment, whether from the heat of the fire or from their own bodies, she isn’t sure.

All Betty knows is that when Jughead lays her out on the bench seat and dips his mouth to her thighs, the hand she throws against the window to stabilize herself slides against the condensation. “Fuck,” she moans.

Jughead _tsks_ at her, the noise so close to her clit that she jumps. “I’m getting there, Betts, geez. So impatient.” From there all she can focus on is the heat of his tongue on her and the starbursts behind her closed eyes that only grow more intense with each stroke until they explode blindingly as she cries out her pleasure. He keeps going, though, firmly pressing her hips to still them and sucking on her sensitive flesh until she has to thread her fingers through his hair and pull him off her.

He looks smug as hell as he kisses his way back up to her mouth, hands skimming her sides lightly until they come to cup her breasts and pinch each nipple. Betty squeaks into the kiss from the overwhelming sensations but feels the calm settle over her with the weight of Jughead’s chest against hers.

Lips press one, twice, three times in the hollow behind her ear. “I love you.” He says it on an exhale, like a sigh of relief and Betty is overcome with emotion. How is it that one person can make her feel so full of love that she could burst, that Jughead can render her speechless with the simplest of words and actions. She can feel his smile against the skin of her neck and it makes her want to scream to the world that nothing will ever take this feeling from her.

“I love you, too.” It doesn’t feel like enough, the three little words are just too small to encompass it all; it can’t possibly capture the warmth of his grin or his determination to always do the right thing, or his infuriating yet endearing overuse of adverbs, or the way he can settle her nerves with one look or touch, or how impossibly happy she is to have him in her life.

He shifts against her and their sweat-slicked skin squelches, breaking the moment and setting her off in giggles. But this is love too, Betty knows, finding the humor and comfort in every single moment.

“Fuck, it’s hot,” Jughead grumbles.

Betty pulls herself upright to reach for her makeup bag. “Good thing I’m prepared this time.” She produces a condom from a side zippered pocket and then the feverishness is back, Jughead’s mouth on her breast and her hand slipped the condom on and then lifting her hips and sinking down and _oh, yes_ and sweat dripping down her back as she rides him harder, harder, harder.

He bites her neck when he finishes and Betty knows it’ll only add time to be in the hair and makeup chair when they finally get to the stage, covering up the marks he leaves, but she can’t bring herself to care.

  
  


 

In the end, Kevin can’t be bothered by their disheveled state when they rush into the dressing rooms and Betty knows that Jughead is still a bit too blissed out to fully comprehend Kevin’s comment about _his line and choreography._

He comes crashing back to earth once Betty is scrubbing at her face with a makeup wipe.

“I’m sorry, Kevin wants me to do _what_ now?” Jughead leans on the back of her makeup chair to look her dead in the eye through the mirror.

She feigns nonchalance. In reality, they’ve all known the final number is full cast and crew, in order to emphasize the characters’ evolution and reinforce the message of being true to oneself. In letting them all be seventeen, both characters and actors. It sounds hokey but ...Betty can can appreciate the sentiment. It’s supposed to be a meaningful statement for _everyone_ to be in the number; Jughead, as the half-hearted videographer once more, is included in that—as Kevin told her on day one. Betty had known better than to even attempt to talk him into this, last minute bombardment is the way to go.

It’s a happy coincidence that Jughead just happens to be more than a little sexed up beforehand and therefore more amenable to the idea.

“Here,” she says and hands him another makeup wipe. “Help me get the soot off, please?”

“I see you, Cooper,” he says with narrowed eyes. “Don’t try to distract me.” Even still, he moves around her to perch on the vanity and clean the side of her face she hasn’t gotten to.

As they gently work at the ash in rhythmic circles, Betty explains. “It’s only a costume change on stage, really. The idea of the final number is that all the characters are stripping off their exteriors—the mean girl, the nerd, and whatnot—and revealing their true selves so they can all just be themselves and get to act their age. It’s quite fitting, actually. Given this week. And, you know, the rest of our lives.”

Jughead sighs and rubs harder at a spot on her neck. “This one isn’t going anywhere,” he laments.

Betty looks around him to peer into the mirror. “That’s because that one’s a hickey, Jug. Dammit!” His grin is smug and she tosses the used wipe at his face in retaliation.

“So this stripping of the exteriors. If it’s just the characters’ true selves, why am I there? I don’t have a character’s true nature to be revealed. So I get to stay back here. _Right?_ ”

“I’m pretty sure it was Evelyn’s idea and loath am I to like anything to do with her, it was kind of brilliant. It’s supposed to be a meta moment of us, as the actors, showing our true selves. So we pick a costume or piece of clothing that makes us feel most ourselves—regardless of the character we’re playing. That’s why the whole crew is participating.”

“ _Okay,_ ” Jughead draws out the word. She can see the gears turning, but knows his reluctance to get on stage isn’t going away. She picks up a compact and starts to blot at the mark on her neck, shooting daggers—lovingly—in his direction. The smirk is back.

“ _So,”_ Betty counters. “Your true self ‘costume’ would just be wearing your beanie, if that makes sense. It’s what makes you, you.”

“What’s your ‘costume’ then?”

And there’s her pièce de résistance. From her backpack on the floor, Betty draws out the crown sweater she wore so many months ago; it started as a clothing choice to prove to something intangible to both of them, and now it serves as a reminder that she and Jughead have chosen each other, that he is her home, her person, her everything. Without facing him, she folds it neatly until the crown is centered and face up.

“I’m my truest self with you, Juggie. You’re the one I choose to be myself with.”

For the second time in as many days, Betty looks up to see Jughead in tears. With a careful hand, he draws her to him and presses his lips to hers. There’s barely any space between them when he pulls back to whisper, “You’re the one I choose, too.”

 

 

 

_fin._

**Author's Note:**

> this is my blatantly pathetic plea to please please pretty please comment. hope you enjoyed!


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